Christian Anyone?

I went after contemporary Christian music as I would any other genre by going back to the basics. I tried to find the most important artists and work my way forward, except that's not really possible with Christian Rock. Christian Music per se goes back to the very beginnings of western music. All the great classical composers before Beethoven wrote for the Church at one time or another. Bach was a church organist and wrote much of his music for his church. Anyone who's studied American popular music knows that it has its roots firmly planted in spirituals and gospels. Gospel music was a staple of early Country Music and can be heard in the music of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter family. Rockabilly has the same southern Christian roots and heavily influenced early rock through artists like Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. Soul, Blues, and Jazz were all heavily influenced early American spirituals and gospel music. But Christian Rock has always been in a separate musical world. The music itself has all of the same major musical influences, (There is Christian rock, grunge, hip-hop, rap, etc.) but there are some Christian Rock groups that consider their music to be a form of ministry while others are just musicians who happen to be Christians. Jugs of Clay for example had some early success on the Billboard top 40 charts until it became known that they were a Christian Band. Then there was a major backlash against them on many college campuses and radio stations. I just completed a Christian music order (but I haven't placed it yet) and it is all recent Billboard top chart material because I had almost no success finding publishers that still had the pioneers of Christian in print so I'm not sure what it will take to build a retrospective collection but I am curious to hear a group called Love Song since they are the ones that started it all but it looks like I will have to wait until I find a publisher who decided to re-publish it.

Country Blues

My background is in classical music but I grew up in Texas so Country Music has always been in the background. I'd heard all the names and I'm familiar with most of the music but I never really followed it or studied it. When I took over as the Rogers Public Library AV Librarian and I looked at our music collection I saw immediately that Country Music was an area that needed to be reworked so I did what I always do and went back to the beginning, guys like Jimmie Rogers, the Carter Family, Uncle Dave Macon, and Molly O'Day and Cumberland Mountain Folks. Listening to these guys it's easy to hear the folk-gospel roots of the "hillbilly music " that came from the middle south musical tradition. I've been fascinated, listening to the Maddox Brothers & Rose, Bob Wills, and Moon Mullican. These are the Country & Western Stars that added Swing and Boogie Woogie to Country Music. The Maddox Brothers & Rose added the Hawaiian guitar (electirc guitar) and it really jumped out at me. It had a Hawaiian feel to it but still blended in quite well. Then Roy Acuff and Ernest Tubbs took hillbilly Music and gave it personality that Made Country Music. All these influences merged making way for the Honky Tonk singers Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzel and their alter ego Kitty Wells. I'm hoping I can build a collection that people will listen to and hear where Country Music got its start, where it's been, and so that they can really appreciate where it's going.

Later.

Several months back I was asked to compile a list of French Language videos for a local French teacher. While I was at it I also selected a number of French Language DVD's I thought I would add to the collection. I later did the same for Spanish Language films. The hardest thing to do in collection building is trying to get the right mix of popular materials versus retrospective materials. Every public library has to work hard to get the right mix of Educational, Recreational, and Informational missions. I want all the things I buy for the library to fly off the shelves, but at the same time if a teacher comes to the library I hope they will find something they can use in their class. I also hope that some day someone will come into the library who is curious about the history of American Cinema and they find John Barrymore's the Black Pirate in our collection.

There are some great foreign language movies, movies that changed cinema. One of my favorite foreign directors is Akira Kurosawa. His movie the Seven Samurai was remade into the Magnificent Seven. His movie Yojimbo was remade into a Fist Full of Dollars then into Last Man Standing. And of course Kurosawa's the Hidden Castle was supposed to be the inspiration for Star Wars. When you include Bergman, Truffaut, Fellini, Brunuel, and Eisenstein there are a ton of important foreign films that should be in a well rounded collection. One film I have been agonizing over is Lani Reifenstahl's Triumph of the Will. On one hand I cannot see this movie flying off the shelf but on the other hand it is a film that is both important from a historical aspect and a film history aspect.

I don't know where I'm going with this yet. The DVD collection needs to grow rapidly. I have been thinking that I would concentrate on general release 'movie' and television first. But the more I look at the 'How- to' I wonder if I can wait. I already know I'll get the major Academy Award winners and 'classic movies' first. Of course Classic Horror is in the pipeline, and I've looked at Classic Sci-Fi and Classic Comedy. When I start looking at classic foreign film I wonder if I'll ever get to Basketball skills and drills. So it looks like Foreign Language DVD's are getting pushed back to this summer. (Sigh)

WHAT'S NEXT

My next music buy is Latin. I already have it ready I'm just waiting until I can do it without overloading our technical services people. Other Librarians have things to order also. Latin covers such a wide variety of musical genres that I doubt I can do much except provide a sample of various musical types. I've always liked Jazz so discovering Tito Puente, Tito Rodriguez, and Mario Bauza has been a revelation. I am partictularly interested Mario Bauza and his brother in law Machito since they played with Dizzy Gilespie, Charlie Parker, Buddy Rich and Stan Kenton, just to name a few. There was a lot of crossover between the early bebop jazzers and the Latin jazzers back in the forties and fifties but then Latin music periodically pops up on American Pop charts. There was Rhumba, Mambo, and Cha Cha back in the fifties and sixties followed by Salsa and Meringue. Julio Iglesias and Ricky Martin broke onto American charts fairly recently but generally the current crop of Latin stars such as Daddy Yankee, Juanes, and Shakira haven't quite broken into mainstream USA quite yet. I'll probably be fine tuning this order for a while since a lot of what I originally wanted is out of print and I've learned more since. Later.

Country

I'm not as comfortable with Country and Western music as I am with other forms of music, but at least I've heard of most of the names. Some of the older performers such as Uncle Dave Macon, the Carter Family, and Kitty Wells were new to me but Hank Williams, Ernest Tubbs, and Lefty Frizzell were all names I'd heard. Of course I attacked the collection like I do all collection building by finding the 'classics' first. My problem here was that I didn't have enough cash to do it all in one buy so the C&W fans who use the library will get the oldies first. Roy Acuff, Eddy Arnold, Waylon Jennings, Pierce Webb, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Thompson, and Bob Wills are guys and gals of Country and Western that I was able to get in on last year's buy. This year I got the Maddox Brothers and Rose, Pee Wee King, Moon Mullican, Molly O'day and the Cumberland Mountain Folks.

Overall I think our Country & Western section was weak. It's one of the reasons I decided to work on it so soon. I pretty much went for the big names, The Judds, Wynonna, Reba McEntire, Clint Black, Garth Brooks, Tanya Tucker, Faren Young, Moe Bandy, Charlie Pride, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Charlie Rich, Statler Brothers, Sonny James, Roger miller, Johnny Cash, Johnny Horton, Buck Owens, Jim Ed Brown, Bobby Bare, Patsy Cline, Ray Price, and George Jones. I think this should cover me for most Country fans. I did try to get the famous duets, Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner, George Jones and Tammy Wynette, along with Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn but these are getting hard to find in print. I also picked up Gram Parson's G.P/Grievous Angel CD. Gram Parsons like Charlie Daniels was a Country Rock crossover at a time when this wasn't very common. He seems to have been unnoticed in his time but I find that a lot of country music critics mention him as an influence on later C&W stars such as Dwight Yokam. One reason I bought the CD was that Emmylou Harris appears on the Gram Parsons CD so I thought it was an Important CD for several reasons. Two guys I need to find are Tennessee Ernie Ford and Grandpa Jones. Both need to be a part of any country collection but so far I haven't found one of their CD's in print.